Getting started with J2ME Application Development

Of late I have started developing J2ME Applications in my spare time. I initially tried to learn Symbian / C++, but I am not quite comfortable with C++ and the Nokia emulators are a pile of crap. Since I own a Sony Ericsson W710i mobile phone, I can test the application on my phone itself :-). This is my first tryst with a interpreted programming language after BASIC in my good old high school days.

To get the ball rolling, you`ll have to download and install the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.2 for CLDC. The required JDK/JRE is also listed in the download page itself. There are loads of sample applications to test the water before jumping into development.

The most basic radical differnce for me in J2ME compared against BREW is the memory management. There is no need to manage memory in J2ME, ofcourse there are best practices and guidelines to keep you memory utilization low but it wont crash the phone as BREW apps can do. You have the system garbage collector running whenever the phone is low on memory to reclaim the unused memory.

I follow up with more posts on my experience with J2ME Apps.